Charles Egbert Craddock

“ His heart sprang into his mouth. He had fallen asleep in Hamlet's chair. Actors and audience were gone,—he wondered that the stir of the crowd had failed to wake him. The theatre was dark and deserted, the doors were locked, and beneath the walls lay perhaps the body of a dead man.
He started up trembling at the thought. The moon's pallid light fell through one of the lofty windows above the gallery and quivered in ghostly fashion upon the stage where erstwhile the filial Dane had hearkened to the hollow voice of the spectre of a murdered sire. ”

“ The lamp had been lighted in the car, although it was not yet quite dark. Ned could see still as they whizzed along on some considerable elevation the wide spread of the city stretching in dusky undulations against the sky, which had now grown gray, portending rain. Beyond some dip, full of roofs, massive blocks of business houses rose, frowning and gloomy, while between surged smoke and dust in fantastic, haggard clouds that suggested witches and demons and undreamed-of powers of the air. ”

“ Never was there a muster of militia or a parade of firemen or a wonderful exhibition of bicyclists through the streets that they were not present to see. Whenever the exaction of the payment of some grotesque election bet set the community agog over the spectacle of one commercial magnate propelling another in a wheelbarrow through the principal thoroughfares, preceded by a band of music, and with all the teeth of the town a-grin in evidence of relish, the keenest cackle of callow laughter came from the four Platts and their attendant printer's devil. ”

“ Pete sat down on the curbstone to wait, took the stump of cigar which had been gleaned from the dirty sidewalk, lighted it at the grinning monkey's beside him, and summoning all the strength of stomach for which boys are noted, tried hard to smoke it.
Sim Gray was one of those weak and wicked young fellows with a pocket full of money and a taste for low company, who are forever the prey of other young fellows not so weak, and yet more wicked. ”

“ No murderer ever dreaded an encounter with the ghost of the defunct victim more quailingly than Pete feared meeting Ned. He lived too in absolute terror of the junior "typos" and galley-boys, who he fancied had entered into a conspiracy to decoy him out and thrash him by way of partisanship for Ned, for now and again Pete contemplated the unvarnished truth and was for the nonce oblivious of the fact that only his own guilty conscience and Ned were aware that he had sworn falsely and maliciously in the effort to compass the ruin of his friend. ”

“ He did wish that Ned could know that he had not intended to bring affairs to this pass,—that he had only lied, as boys often lie, for petty spite, and had never imagined the far-reaching consequences that had ensued. If Pete had been a receptive subject for a moral lesson he might now have learned what a terrible engine for evil even a diminutive lie can be. But he was only asking himself how could he be expected to foresee such a coincidence as the probable pillage of the theatre, supplemented by the burning of the building. ”

“ The air was pulsing with rhythmic vibrations; the earth throbbed tumultuously; from a square railed inclosure in the middle of the street a column of black smoke gushed suddenly forth as if spewed from the pits of hell, and a locomotive was shrieking like a demon as it rushed out from the long tunnel beneath the avenue where the cable car rolled heavily on and on, its gong clamoring at every intersecting street, and now and again in a tumult of jarring warning lest some enterprising vehicle usurp the track.
Once more Ned looked at the detective. The detective was looking at Ned. ”

“ The passengers stood in the aisles packed like sardines, or clung to the platforms of the already crowded open grip-car.
"They are all goin' ter Gorham's," crowed Pete, rejoicing in the prospective crowds as if he had a share in the receipts.
Ned began to think it a fine thing too. He had all the afflatus of public amusement. To be one of a great joyful crowd seemed to him to multiply the pleasure by the multitude. His step grew light. He heard the light steps behind him. Everybody was going, and he was going too.
The theatre was well filled before they came in sight of the massive building. ”

“ Any disinterested spectator would have thought Frank the more formidable figure in any encounter, domestic or otherwise. Frank was an amateur athlete, and as he sat in the comfortable library lighting his cigar after luncheon, the contour of his strong, shapely limbs under his light fawn-tinted spring suit, the pose of his blond head on his broad shoulders, the strength of his grip suggested in the mere manner of using his fingers, in casting away the match, all intimated a muscular reserve power none the less formidably apparent for being relaxed. ”

“ He had never known a small working boy such as Edward to buy a daily paper. He thought Ned was guying him until he took another look at the outstretched hand with the proffered nickel. Then he gravely handed over the folded journal. The elderly gentleman of clerical aspect looked down at Ned with a smile; he saw in the occurrence only an amusing affectation of mannish tastes and habits. It had a far graver meaning to another person in the car, who was openly staring at Ned, with a new light kindling in his eyes and an expression of triumph in the curl of his lip. ”

“ He worked as long as he had work, but when he was idle he began to drink more and more, and perhaps at last it was no great misfortune to his family when one of the pestilences which decimate the tenement region laid this once fair stalk of wheat low with the "cheat." He left his wife, Ned, and the puny, sickly little girl as remote, as alien from their old, country home, as if that haven of humble, hearty comfort were in a foreign planet. They lived as best they might on the boy's wages and the few jobs of coarse washing that she could get to do at home. ”

“ For this astute person had come to believe that Gorham had himself fired his own theatre!
He believed the boy, entering for the purpose of theft and concealed among the scenery, had accidentally gained a knowledge of the manager's crime,—else why should a lad of his years, a mere child, feel an interest in so remote a subject as the details of the insurance of the building? He doubtless went or was sent there with the object of stealing, nefarious enough! but burning the building could work an advantage to no one but the owner, who would get the big insurance money! ”

“ Often Ned had been to this engine-house when the men were at their drill, and he generally escorted the four Platt girls, who could not squeal loud enough nor shrill enough to express their admiration,—not of the splendidly efficient men, swinging down so quickly into place, all equipped and ready in one swift moment as it seemed, but of the horses and their preternatural wisdom in taking up their proper position of their own initiative, without a word of command, at the familiar signal. ”

“ Ned was in a strange world,—a great world of shams, where the trees were clots of green paint on immense canvas sheets stretched on tottering wooden frames, where hospitable castles had no substance, where mountain crags were trestles of various heights supporting spring mattresses, covered with dusty imitations of mosses and vines, on which desperate leaps might safely be made. ”

“ This enabled him to stand still until Ned was once more forging ahead, when the genteel-looking man in citizen's dress again began to stroll along, swinging his cane and leisurely puffing his cigar. He needed its solace, for a sharp nettling irritation was beginning to be very prominent in his consciousness. "I'd rather shadow a grasshopper than a boy," he said to himself, for there seemed to be some chance to restrain the mere activities of the one, and he could not be sure what the vagaries of the other implied. ”

“ Now, insulted in his own theatre, he shook off the slight restraints which he acknowledged. It suited his humor to consider the "first player's" demonstration as a blow. He looked positively tigerish as he sprung upon the actor. The energy of his wrath gave much "power to his elbow;" the blows that fell from his clenched fist had a wonderfully resonant compact sound,—it made Ned wince to think that a man's head and face received them. The "first player" could do little to defend himself. The crowd, that always turns to the successful side, lifted not a finger to aid or protect him. ”

“ Whatever may be the beneficial educational effects of seeing the play of Hamlet from the gallery, they are certainly lacking in a view stolen from the wings, with fifty cents heavy on the conscience, nothing at all on the stomach, a great and growing dread of discovery, and a morbid presentiment that something terrible is about to happen.
Was it not far better, Ned thought, to be at home, singing with his mother their simple songs about the Good Shepherd, according to their wont in those evenings when he was at leisure from the office? ”

“ Ned knew that the safe had been forced at last, and that the explosion had served to avert the discovery of his presence through the crash of his noisy misadventure. He rose from the boat, trembling, weak, but animated with a new hope. The finding of the craft here intimated that he was near the wall, where it had doubtless been heedlessly thrust aside, for it had naught to do with the play of Hamlet, and the furnishings of the castle of Elsinore filled all the foreground. ”

“ Ned was not to be arrested immediately, he understood. The detective was to "shadow" him in the hope of seeing him communicate with some of the gang of thieves and incendiaries who had robbed and burned the theatre, for they naturally concluded that he was only an accomplice of others, as a boy alone could hardly have plotted and executed a crime of such magnitude.
"Shadder him as ye may, ye'll never arrest him. I'll tip him the wink ter skedaddle outer town," Pete thought triumphantly. ”

“ Whenever the moon was up, weird, dark shadows would haunt the chimney-pots, and go skulking slyly over the roofs, and Ned's imagination would conjure into the air beings far more strange than his simple mythical friends whom he had placed in order about their unknown hearths below. ”

“ Being silently motioned out by the "funny man" with a facetious air of mock mystery, Ned had nothing to do for a time after rendering up his copy in the composing-room, but to lean on the sill of the high window in the hall of the fifth story and await orders.
As he looked out he saw that the sun was tending toward the west, the mansard roofs and domes and steeples defined sharply against the dazzling cumulus clouds. The city stretched out so far beneath it that one might fancy it must come to the ground within the corporate limits. ”

“ It was rare, since his life was spent in vibration between the business portions of the city and the tenement district, that he saw the equipages of people of wealth and fashion, which now flashed by in quick succession. He noticed that they were filled with the silken shimmer of dainty attire and bright pink-and-white faces, which seemed to bloom in the delicate shadow of the quivering lace or fringe of parasols; these parasols, being white or violet or of roseate hue, were themselves of flower-like suggestion, resembling some species of convolvuli. ”

“ He had posted many letters for employers, but never one for himself, and never before nor after one like this. A man beyond the furthest limits of the lamp's aureola of misty light had paused too, breathing hard. He was not used to running so far nor running so fast. He thought the boy's look and attitude very suspicious, as Ned, realizing the supreme significance of the moment and the value of this letter to him, slowly and solemnly dropped it into the box, and then swiftly scudded off down the street. ”

“ There he knew, under the trees, were often tramps, spending the night on the benches,—sometimes loafers of a better class belated and sleeping off the effect of their potations. Doubtless some of them would know where was the nearest police station or fire-alarm. All that he had seen seemed now so like a dream that he wondered whether after all he were not mistaken, whether the "first player" could really intend to burn the theatre. ”

“ The heavy tones of a fire-bell smote the silence suddenly.
There was a movement under the trees. The loungers on the benches were waking. Far up dark intersecting streets came the swift footfalls of boys, who spring up mysteriously at any hour of the night or day, eager to crowd around a fire. There was too the heavy tread of unseen policemen striding through the gloom. The sharp gong of the hose-carriage clamoring in the distance cleared a pass-way for the swinging gallop of its white horses. ”